Yellow-and-blue needs to pull off upset of group leader to get back into Top 16 contention.

The calculations are complicated, but the conclusion is clear-cut.

Should
Maccabi Tel Aviv fail to defeat Barcelona in Top 16 action at Nokia Arena on
Thursday night it can forget about progressing to the Euroleague
quarterfinals.

Maccabi will only be playing the seventh of its 14 Top 16
games on Thursday. However, a loss to Barca will be its third home defeat in
Group F and will see it fall to a 2-5 record from which it will have no
realistic hope of recovering to finish among the group’s top four teams and
advance to the last eight.

The Spaniards currently lead the group with a
5-1 record, winning their past four games, and have lost just two of 16
Euroleague contests all season.

Maccabi will also need to overcome recent
history if it’s to beat Barca. Since the 2008/09 season, Maccabi and Barcelona
have played six times in the Euroleague, all in the Top 16. Barcelona has won
all six, including in Tel Aviv in each of the past two seasons.

“This
game is critical,” said Maccabi coach David Blatt on Wednesday. “I don’t know
the exact calculations, but we are treating this game as a must-win situation.
Barcelona has hardly lost any games recently, but our showdowns with them are
usually tight.”

Since their last Euroleague games, both Maccabi and Barca
have won their local State Cups. Tel Aviv overcome a tough challenge in the
semifinals versus Maccabi Ashdod and against Maccabi Haifa in the final to lift
the trophy for a 40th time, while Barcelona edged Real Madrid in double-overtime
in the quarterfinals last Thursday before comfortably beating both Caja Laboral
Vitoria and Valencia to win the cup.

“We know how strong our opponent
is,” Blatt said.

“This team is similar to the one we met in the past two
seasons. They made some changes, but the new players are probably even better
than the ones they replaced.”

Maccabi will still be without the injured
Lior Eliyahu on Thursday, leaving Blatt with an especially depleted front-court
following the release of Malcolm Thomas.

Centers Shawn James and Darko
Planinic and power forward Nik Caner-Medley are the only big men left in the
Maccabi rotation and face a particularly deep Barca team.

Center Ante
Tomic (10.9 PPG, 5.9 RPG) is playing the best basketball of his career this
season, while Nate Jawai (7.3 PPG, 4.3 RPG) and three-time All-Euroleague forward
Erazem Lorbek (9.1 PPG, 3.4 RPG) pose difficult yet different challenges to
Maccabi and especially James, who has almost single-handedly carried his team in
the paint in recent weeks.

“I think that if we play to potential we can
win this game,” James said. “We know how good Barca is, but they are humans like
us and we can beat them.”